I received a lens I had ordered, a Ukrainian Hartblei 35mm f2.8 Super Rotator. This is an unusual lens in, in addition to focus and aperture controls, it also supports shift and tilt movements. There are other tilt and shift lens, but the Hartblei is unique in allowing the tilt and shift axes to move freely and independently.
So what’s it for?
A typical use is to take pictures of buildings where the sides don’t converge towards the top. For this application, it is described as a perspective correction lens.
The tilt function allows the plane of focus to be tilted, away from parallel to the lens. This allows either extreme depth of field along a plane, or radically shortened DOF when the lens is tilted the opposite way. This has been used to generate the strange effect in the picture.
It makes big things look like toys!
More of my tilt/shift pictures here.